from the wilderness, or if he would not do so they
would torment and try him with greater plagues."[492]

These doings are not sufficiently remote from sober fact for us to be
unable to detect human enemies in the supposed beings of the spirit
world, and this conclusion is confirmed by a later passage in the same
narrative describing Guthlac awakened from his sleep and hearing "a
great host of the accursed spirits speaking in British [bryttisc] and
he knew and understood their words because he had been erewhile in
exile among them."[493] Guthlac in England is only experiencing what
other saints experienced elsewhere,[494] and we cannot doubt we have
in these reminiscences of saintly experience that mixture of fact with
traditional belief which would follow the priests of the new religions
from their native homes to the cell.

It is necessary to consider another great element in human life with
reference to its ethnological value, for folklore has always been
intimately associated with it, and recently, owing to Mr. Frazer's
brilliant researches, this branch of folklore has been almost unduly
accentuated. I mean, of course, agriculture. Mr. Frazer has ignored
the ethnological side of agriculture, and it has been appropriated by
the student of economics as a purely historical institution. This has
caused a special position to be given to agricultural rites and
customs almost without question and certainly without examination, and
it will be necessary to go rather closely into the subject in order to
clear up the difficulties which present neglect has produced. I shall
once again draw my illustrations from the British Isles.

[Illustration: SCENE FROM THE LIFE OF ST. GUTHLAC SHOWING THE ATTACKS
OF THE DAEMONES]

I put my facts in this way: (1) In all parts of Great Britain there
exist rites, customs, and usages connected with agriculture which are
obviously and admittedly not of legislative or political origin,
and which present details exactly similar to each other in
_character_, but differing from each other in _status_; (2) that the
difference in status is to be accounted for by the effects of
successive conquests; (3) that the identity in character is not to be
accounted for by reference to manorial history, because the area of
manorial institutions is not coincident with the area of these rites,
customs, and usages; (4) that exact parallels to them exist in India
as integral portions of village instit